Drake's Island lies in Plymouth Sound, the stretch of water south of the city of Plymouth, Devon, England. The first recorded name for the island was in 1135, when it was referred to as St. Michael's, after the chapel erected on it. At some later date the chapel was rededicated to St. Nicholas and the island adopted the same name. From the latter part of the 16th Century the island was occassionaly referred to as Drake's island after Sir Francis Drake, the English privateer who used Plymouth as his home port. From around 1540 the island began to be fortified as a defence against the French and Spanish, and for several centuries remained the focal point of the defence of the three original towns that were to become modern Plymouth. It was from here that Drake sailed in 1577 to return in 1580 having circumnavigated the world. Even well into the 19th Century, maps and other references continued to refer to the island as St. Nicholas's Island and it is only in about the last 100 years that this name has slipped into disuse and the name Drake's Island has been adopted.